News Reporting on Comfort Women

Abstract

This article explored South Korean and Japanese newspaper reports on the “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930s-1940s, to examine how print media have reproduced the reality of the issue. I conducted a quantitative frame analysis of the contents of news articles ( N = 384) on the comfort women in four South Korean and Japanese newspapers. The frames of comfort women articles in all papers can be considered to be very stereotyped, because they have changed little according to the newspaper’s political position (conservative/liberal), attitude (anti-Japan/anti–South Korea), and nationality (South Korean/Japanese). When the relationship of South Korea and Japan has been combative, conflict and morality frames have been abundant. In contrast, when the relationship has been favorable, human interest frames have been ample.